Product-form solutions for a class of structured multi-dimensional Markov processes

Motivated by queueing systems with heterogeneous parallel servers, we consider a class of structured multi-dimensional Markov processes whose state space can be partitioned into two parts: a finite set of boundary states and a structured multi-dimensional set of states, exactly one dimension of which is infinite. Using separation of variables, we show that the equilibrium distribution, typically of the queue length, can be represented as a linear combination of product forms. For an important subclass of queueing systems, we characterize explicitly the waiting time distribution in terms of mixtures of exponentials.